


Ostara

by chewysugar



Series: An Abundance of Equinoxes [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, F/M, Family Secrets, Flirting, Good Lucius Malfoy, Good Narcissa Black Malfoy, Guilt, Insomnia, Malfoy Manor, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pre-Epilogue, Rain, Redeemed Draco Malfoy, Spring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 13:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20779277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewysugar/pseuds/chewysugar
Summary: It's a time when life is meant to flourish--when new things begin to grow. Draco didn't believe he'd ever find a reason to go on living--at least not until he's set up on a tea-date with the most bewitching of witches.





	Ostara

**Author's Note:**

> Same as usual with my HP stuff--never really read Cursed Child, haven't checked into Pottermore much. This will contain some liberties concerning Narcissa, but as it's fan fiction, I don't feel too guilty at taking them.

Spring always made the manor look better. In winter, the silver transposed against white snow made it appear skull-like; in autumn, the leaves turned dark shades of purple and red that were almost black; and in summer, the flowerbeds were so opulent and teeming with white peacocks strutting around and shrieking for dominance that all the life and energy of the season seemed just another pointless extravagance.

But when the buds first peered from the branches of the trees, and the streams began to gurgle like little laughing babies, Draco found home to be less of a great masquerade.

White clouds shot through with grey hovered like doves over the grounds. Draco strolled through the woods, hands tucked into his pockets, eyes on the ground. A breeze rife with the strangling grasp of fading winter lifted strands of hair from his bangs and the back of his neck.

Mother had fretted over his hair ever since last June. “It’s getting so unruly, darling,” she’d said. Her voice had already lost its original snap by that point, the feather-light, delicate breeziness left behind already making it seem as if the smallest breath of air could have made her fall to the ground.

“I'll get it cut,” Draco had assured her. But he never had. Why bother? It was just hair. Cutting it would do little to remedy the poison that had circulated through him since the end of his doomed Sixth Year.

In any event, he rather liked the length now: thicker than his father’s had ever been, and tumbling to just beyond his shoulders. He’d taken to tying it into a sort of sloppy ponytail. Father had said, in an effort of a joke, that Draco’s hair looked too much like a Feudal Japanese samurai for a contemporary English wizard.

Father had been trying to be in good spirits ever since the War had ended. He’d found the bright side in even the bleakest of days, restored the manor, and bought both his wife and son the most lavish of gifts. One would have thought that he’d turned over an entire new tree—and perhaps he had. But Draco could also see the desperation in his father’s eyes—as if he needed, more than anything, for things in their lives to be peaceful…normal.

Draco scoffed as he walked across a bridge carved from pale alder wood. As if the Malfoy family had ever boasted anything approaching normalcy. Theirs had been a life of pretense—keeping up appearances, swearing fealty to their precious pure blood, and crushing anything that they deemed inferior. And when the whole of the wizarding world had come crashing down, so too had the Malfoy family’s most coveted of all their possessions—the idea of themselves.

Ever since then, they’d all fumbled in the wreckage. His Father tried to be generous to the only two people who wanted him around, and his mother—his once gleaming, elegant, mother—had been reduced to the frailest wildflower in the forest. And he’d been tangled in the brambles of his own thoughts—memories of mistakes, regrets of his past sins, and the delicate hope that he could do a thing about any of it. 

It wasn’t as if he didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t as if any of them didn’t deserve it. He could hide himself from the rest of the world—walk as far into these verdant woods as he wished—and still, he would be forever tainted. He was a Malfoy—too treacherous to be welcome if he begged for a second chance, and too non-committal to go deeper into the shadows.

A rabbit hopped out of the ferns along the path. Fat as butter and brown as a baby’s eyes, it paused, sniffing the air in Draco’s direction, as if trying to discern his intent through the power of scent.

Draco watched it, smiling wryly. Had anyone who’d known him at Hogwarts seen him, they’d have assumed an impostor stood in his stead. Not that he’d ever been debased enough to delight in the torment of small animals; rather, he’d always regarded them with dispassion. What bearing did a rabbit have on his life, after all?

But that, he’d realized these last many lonesome months, was one of the many things he despised himself for. Just because it couldn’t contribute to his sense of self-importance didn’t make it useless. So he really did think furry little creatures like this were cute? What harm was there in that? None.

The rabbit hopped away, leaving Draco alone. It wouldn’t tarry—not for the enjoyment of one such as he. He ought to have appreciated such things in the days of innocent childhood, not acted as if he were better than them.

What did it matter now? It didn’t. He didn’t deserve even small niceties. Not after the kind of heinous little bastard he’d been.

He walked on, smelling the earthy brine of a nearby pond. He’d sit at the stone bench there, and gaze at the murky, still water. Then he’d go home for another dinner with his parents, and endure swallowing down the bitter change along with each mouthful of food. He’d done the same thing every day since the manor had been cleansed of anything to do with the War, and he’d likely do so until age and disuse made a wraith out of him.

Once he came to the end of the path, however, he found his martyr’s road impeded. He recognized the backs of his parents’ heads. They’d beat him to the punch, and were both sitting on the ornately carved stone bench, looking out at the dragonflies dancing over the surface of the pond.

Draco could hear them, both speaking in low voices, though not quite low enough he couldn’t hear snatches of conversation.

“…he needs this…” his father said, still in that voice that seemed determined to see the positive side of a derailed train. “No matter what he says…” 

His mother, her voice almost lost on the breeze, replied, “…he won’t accept without a struggle…”

Draco sighed. Once upon a time, he’d have demanded just what in the world they meant by it, talking about him behind his back. Now, he simply couldn’t muster the energy.

He cleared his throat. Lucius and Narcissa both looked round, eyes wide.

His mother stood, mustering a smile. “There you are,” she said. “We guessed you’d be out for a walk.”

“I wonder how that was,” Draco replied, without any trace of his old drawl and sarcasm. Again, his days were filled with an almost evangelical need to wander the manor grounds. How could his parents have _not_ assumed to find him here? 

He walked to the bench, but did not sit.

Narcissa sighed. “Darling, your hair—

“—is mine to do with as I wish.” Draco said.

Lucius took a breath. “Your mother may have a point, Draco. You must present yourself respectably to the world.”

“That would require me to go out into the world at all.”

Gadfly’s skimmed over the edge of the pond. One brave insect landed on the cuff of Draco’s robes. He watched it, wondering why people of all description assumed insect’s lives were less vital than those of other species.

“We’d come to that conclusion,” said Lucius with a slight return to his former briskness. “For that reason, we’ve decided it best for the world to come to you.”

The gadfly alighted, its silver wings slicing through the air like a Golden Snitch.

“I’m to work from home, then.” The thought brought a grin to Draco’s lips.

“No.” Narcissa observed him with the kind of patience only a parent could possess. “Although finding work might do wonders for you.”

“And how am I supposed to do that, when nobody wants to spit on me, let alone interview me?” He felt his voice start to shake, and gazed hard at the bulrushes. He wanted nothing more than to disappear among them and into the murky depths forever. 

Neither of his parents spoke for a moment. Draco had just started to think that he’d scored some kind of victory when his father said, “I suppose it’s not for lack of trying, but that is neither here nor there. We weren’t discussing job opportunities for you, Draco. We were discussing life beyond here…your _own_ life…”

Proof that he still had a heart at all came in the deep sinking he felt of it in his chest at that moment. If it wasn’t gaining money, it was the next most important thing to a Malfoy: continuing the family line. In that any and all tethers to other people, let alone those of the feminine persuasion, had snapped when Draco left Hogwarts following Dumbledore’s murder, the thought of such socialization was almost laughable. 

Not that he’d ever had much experience by way of girls. Pansy Parkinson had, like all the other hangers-on, been noting but a sycophant. Draco shuddered to think of the times they’d held hands, or of the singular instance of her having his head in her lap on the train to school.

Otherwise, he’d been too in love with himself to give romance more than a cursory thought.

If he hadn’t wanted it back then, he certainly didn’t want it now.

Something of his thoughts must have shown on his face. Narcissa said, almost coaxingly, “There are those willing to overlook— 

“That I was a Death Eater?” Draco laughed hollowly. “That I was a coward? Brilliant. I’ll marry the first of those.”

For a moment, irritation flashed like blue lightning in Narcissa’s eyes. But, as ever, she abandoned the response for collapse. Her head fell, and her lips twisted in defeat. Draco felt shame worm through his guts like some immense serpent. Here was another reason why he was in the running for biggest monster in the world: his mother was in just as much pain as he was; yet he had to be the one to kick her when she was already wounded. 

The need to castigate himself, however, was taken from his grasp by his father. Goaded by his son’s carelessness, Lucius got to his feet, all trace of gentility abandoned. 

“Enough,” he said. “Enough of all of it, Draco. Enough sulking, enough bemoaning, and enough hurting your mother.”

“Oh really,” Narcissa huffed. “As if I’m a delicate—

“No, Cissy.” Lucius said, his eyes piercing his only child like shards of ice. “We may have made a mistake in coddling him all his life, but this ends now.” He pointed a slender finger at his son. “You wander around here like a ghost, letting yourself go to ruin, and to what end?”

Draco glared at his father. How dare he? How dare he choose now of all times to lay these expectations at his son’s feet? It was bad enough he’d been content to let Draco carry on like a brat prince all his life, but now, when the family name they’d lived for meant as much as pond scum, Lucius had the audacity to tell him to grow up? 

“You have no idea,” said Draco through gritted teeth. “No idea what—

“We were Death Eaters long before you,” said Lucius coldly. “We have a very good idea.”

Draco shook his head. “Yes, you were. But I don’t recall either of you being responsible for the death of the greatest wizard the world has ever known.”

Narcissa said, “That was Snape!”

“I was there,” Draco replied. “If I hadn’t been there, Snape wouldn’t have had the chance. If I hand’t let the rest of them in, Dumbledore would have lived.” He would have lived; Voldemort would not have gotten Hogwarts in his clutches, and so many of Draco’s classmates would have survived.

His mother stared at her feet. Lucius’ shoulders heaved. In the light filtering through the trees, Draco saw the quantities of grey in his parents’ hair.

“What would you have me do?” Lucius sounded broken, and it made Draco want to both scream and sob into his father’s chest. “Do you want to be punished, Draco? You want me to disown you? To whip you? To bend you over my knee and beat you?”

“_Lucius_!” Narcissa hissed.

Draco stared his father down, blue eyes boring into blue eyes.

Then Draco smiled, the blade of a dagger splitting his lips into a dreadful facsimile of mirth.

“All of the above,” he whispered. “A little discipline might have worked wonders on me a long time ago, Father.” 

Once more, Lucius’ face broke, like a porcelain mask shattered by some immense blow. He picked each tiny fragment off the ground, and reassembled his composure as best he could. Draco saw the fissures, though, and once more wished he’d been kinder. Yet here was more opportunity to drive the blade further between his ribs.

_Yell at me_, he thought. _Hit me. Take me to task_…

But Lucius merely walked away, his greying blonde hair a rime of receding frost on his head. Narcissa stood, rising like a swan with broken wings. Without looking at her son, she followed Lucius—two phantoms banished by the very thing they’d tried to bring back to life.

Draco stood there, torn between a sickening sense of self-congratulations and a desire to scream himself hoarse.

Something rustled in the bushes. A moment later, a fox stepped from the underbrush, a dead rabbit clutched in its jaws—the same one Draco had encountered on the path.

Furious, he reached for his wand, and didn’t think twice before firing a stunner at the thoughtless, murderous thing. The fox leapt aside, still holding its prey in its teeth. It scampered away, and Draco Malfoy was alone once more.

* * *

He didn’t sleep properly, not anymore. Instead of being claimed by the embrace of slumber, Draco, more often than not, succumbed to exhaustion after hours of restlessness. There was no recovery from the day, and what dreams he had were snatches of disturbing memories: emerald stars in the shape of skulls and snakes; old men falling to their deaths; classmates screaming, the embrace of a man twisted beyond human shape…

Not for the first time, Draco launched himself from the clutch of these nightmares, and stumbled out of bed. His room was dark and empty around him. Cold air bit into every molecule of his naked flesh. With a frustrated sigh, he reached for a pair of green silk pajama bottoms and a bathrobe the colour of poison. Another reason he’d had a hard time sleeping was that his body fluctuated between scorching heat and bitter chill whenever he slipped below the covers. Sleeping nude seemed to be the only relief. 

Awake and loathing it, Draco left his bedroom. On bare feet, he padded down opulent hallways, ignoring the sounds of the softly snoring portraits along the walls. Not so long ago, these corridors had crawled with murderers. A giant snake had coiled around every blind corner, her great, slitted eyes ever watchful. One terrible night, Draco had collided full on with Fenrir Greyback. The ravenous way Greyback had watched him with those eyes the colour of piss—as if he wanted to devour Draco inch by slow, torturous inch—still lingered in Draco’s memory like a great scar.

He’d heard old classmates screaming—tortured and imprisoned and debased…

Draco laid a steady hand on the balustrade at the top of the stairs, his ears ringing with the memory of Granger’s piercing screams.

If one shred of positivity had come of those dark days, it was that Draco had learned a valuable lesson: just because he hadn’t liked Potter or his friends hadn’t meant that he’d thirsted for their deaths, or cared to witness them suffer. All the times he’d stooped to such daydreams as a child had been ignorant, schoolboy braggadocio.

To this day, he avoided the cellar. To this day he didn’t go into the room where his unhinged aunt had tortured Granger with the same knife she’d used to kill that old house-elf.

Draco steadied himself. He needed to divert his thoughts. A glance out the window showed him that cold lashes of rain were cascading over the property. Maybe this time he’d leave his dreams behind…maybe he’d lose them in the wild woods…

He descended the stairs on hurried feet. It didn’t matter to him that he wasn’t dressed for the weather. He almost anticipated the change of developing hypothermia. He would, after all, deserve it…

Draco had just hurried by the open doors to the drawing room when he noticed light flickering. Peering around the door, he saw a fire crackling in the hearth. And there, sitting before the flames, her head bent, her body wracked with sobs, was his mother.

To turn and leave her would have been the simplest thing to do. But Draco, still guilty from the scene by the pond earlier that day, couldn’t leave her to her own despair—not in this pre-dawn darkness, at least.

He was halfway across the room when Narcissa looked up. Tears glistened on her cheeks, shining in the firelight like stars. Draco froze, ashamed at having intruded on something so private. But Narcissa did not hide her sorrow—she faced him, tears on display.

“You should sleep,” she said.

“As should you.” Draco crossed the rug, and knelt by his mother’s side. He noticed a large, leather-bound album open on her lap. At her feet, a box filled with photographs and odd trinkets lay like a treasure chest. “Mother, we have plenty of sleeping draughts…”

“Yes,” said Narcissa tartly, “that’s all I need, is to become an addict.” She gripped the edges of the photo album.

Draco noticed a photo of two young women: one with cascading blonde hair—obviously his mother in her youth; the other, with darker hair and a vibrant smile, almost reminded him of Bellatrix Lestrange…except he’d never known his late aunt to smile in any way other than in the delights of sadism.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” said Draco, eyes still fixed on the merry-eyed teenaged girl, and wondering who she was.

Narcissa sighed. “It isn’t just today, Draco. Ever since we came back here…” She shook her head. “I understand that what happened was beyond anything your father and I can comprehend, but there’s so much ahead of you. We don’t want to see you squander your life.”

Draco took a breath. “It’s just hard to believe that there’s life ahead at all. Beyond what I used to be—and not,” he added, raising his voice, “just a Death Eater. Everything. Who I was as a child…I’m not proud of it. And I don’t know who to be now, or how to be it. All I know is this…what I’ve been feeling beyond…” 

Narcissa rubbed her eyes, and then gazed at the album in her lap. After a silence that stretched like a barren moor, she said, “I lost my best friend the day that I accepted your father’s marriage proposal.”

Draco stared at her. Like everything in his life, he’d grown up with the comfortable idea of his parents. That they were people had been something he’d taken for granted as long as he’d been alive.

“We grew up together,” Narcissa went on. “She was my playmate, my champion…even being Sorted into separate houses wasn’t enough to separate us. When things started to fall apart—when _he_ first came into power—we clung together through it all. And when Lucius asked for my hand, and I accepted, that was all it took to drive the wedge between Andromeda and I.”

“Andromeda?” Draco gasped. “I thought—

Narcissa smiled. “You thought I meant Bella? Oh no. Not at all. You see, Bellatrix was always possessed of something wilder than Rommie and me. She had to be seen, had to be heard: making mischief, having tantrums, doing wrong…succeeding. But your Aunt Andromeda and I were always the hidden among the three. We were enough for each other. It was only after the Dark Lord’s rise to power that Bellatrix became even remotely interested in being anything like a sister to me.”

Her long, graceful fingers traced the edges of the photograph. “I thought nothing would come between us. And really, it didn’t. Not the deaths, not the disappearances. Rommie always kept well out of things, and I…well, I may have held the maintenance of the pure bloods in high regard, but I’d always thought the Death Eaters too…callous.” She laughed bitterly. “That was when they weren’t killing people. After they crossed that line, and the divide started to grow, all I wanted was a return to order.” 

She gazed at Draco rather like Minerva McGonagall once had—as if she were trying to import some great lesson.

Draco swallowed down the dryness coating his tongue. “You…hated the division?”

“Yes.” Narcissa sighed like a dying asp. “Wasteful and completely unnecessary.”

“Then why marry Father?”

“Because I fell in love with him,” she said simply. “It may have been just as orchestrated as Bellatrix and Rodolphus, but I’d known your father longer. And he wasn’t a supporter of the Dark Lord by then. He joined the ranks after our engagement.”

She regarded him as if wary of how he’d react to whatever she chose to say next. “You can’t pretend as if that’s a shock, Draco. You know the choices we’ve made. Your father has a sense of self-preservation and his own biases.”

Of course. Lucius Malfoy had known the best places to be—the safest places to lay loyalty. Not with whoever had the most power, per se, but whoever stood to wield their power with the most devastating force. He’d allied himself with Voldemort over Dumbledore because Voldemort thought nothing of destruction. The safest place to be during a war was behind the line of those who had the most firepower. When Voldemort had disappeared, Lucius had slithered to the Ministry, who could, and had, kept reins over Dumbledore himself. Snake-like, yes, and this side of history, Draco found it utterly wrong. Yet all three of the Malfoy’s had lived; and they’d done so because of that serpentine adaptation.

“That was why Andromeda turned on me,” Narcissa went on. “And I hated it. I spent the months leading up to my own wedding stewing in despair. I was colder than ice to your father; I barely ate, and I refused to sleep in the same bed. I didn’t even attend to the planning of the wedding. Mostly, I just stayed in my room, refusing to talk to anyone…_languishing_.”

Draco felt a prickle crawl up his spine. His mother was describing exactly what he himself was guilty of now, and it made him want to hide under the hearthrug.

“I was punishing life itself,” Narcissa said. “I, who’d gotten everything handed to me, wanted nothing more than to display my misery in hopes that the world would be shamed into getting itself back to rights.”

“What changed?” Draco asked.

Narcissa shrugged. “It simply refused to go on any longer. So I decided to attend to what was left.” She laughed softly. “It was the happiest day of your father’s life when I finally sat down to breakfast with him.” 

Andromeda Black continued to beam at Draco from the photograph. He found it a shame that he’d been so blinded by blood-purity that he’d never known her. He knew she’d had a child with a muggle; and that that child had married his old Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. They’d had a child of their own…and then been killed by Bellatrix and Rodolphus. Somehow, Draco found that loss more devastating than the Lestrange’s deaths.

Narcissa turned the page. Draco’s eyes widened. The photo took up nearly one page of the album, and seemed to be comprised of the entirety of the youths of the Black family. Of the cluster, he recognized his mother and aunts—Bellatrix looking bored out of the mind she’d eventually lose. But it was the two young men to the back right that caught Draco’s eye: both were dark and devastatingly handsome, one taller and more muscular than the other. Both looked as if they’d rather be anywhere else.

Sirius and Regulus Black…

Draco closed his eyes, feeling something warm and stinging welling up. They could have been family. Sirius could have been like an uncle; Regulus could have lived. He and Harry Potter could have grown up as friends—if only the monstrosity of Voldemort had never existed.

He felt the hairs on his forehead lift. Opening his eyes, he saw Narcissa looking at him with unabashed pride.

“You look like them,” she said. “When I see you now, I remember them…how they used to be—

“I’m not cutting it, Mother,” he said softly. After this revelation, he’d never cut his hair again.

He rubbed at his eyes, keenly aware of his own weariness. Once more he looked at the family photograph, his eyes fixed on Andromeda. “Why didn’t you tell me about her?”

“Draco,” she said, “it wouldn’t have done any good.” A shadow fell over her face. “It changes nothing. How I feel—how any of us feel…the best thing to do is pick up the remains and try and rebuild.”

“Why are you telling me this?” said Draco hoarsely.

“For the same reason your father and I want you to meet someone.” She watched him with intent. “I understand, Draco. The need in you to keep hurting. But if you think walking around with your guts hanging out like a wounded fly is going to change your past, you’re deluding yourself.”

But she didn’t understand. Neither of them did: that he wanted so much to move on—to return to the world outside this palace of privilege—to be greater than all that had been wrought within him. But he didn’t have the tools. He’d always had his parents to solve his problems. Barring that, his money, his influence and his old habit of acting disaffected had helped him coast along quite at his leisure. Now, all that had once been was powerless. Lucius and Narcissa were diminished; gold meant as much to him as dust; he hated the very power his family name had once held, and, most maddening of all, Draco Malfoy _did_ care. He’d started to care, and once those seeds had been sown within him, they’d grown like wild ivy. 

“I never learned,” he whispered. “I never had to-- 

Narcissa cupped his face with both hands. For the first time in his life, the pride in her eyes had nothing to do with lineage. “But you can,” she said. “I know you can. I won’t let you become what you suffer.”

Tears spilled down Draco’s face despite his efforts to contain the flow. He sniffled, and slid from his mother’s touch. As much as he savoured this new bond, he still wanted to be his own man.

And he knew what that had to start with.

“Who is she?” He wiped his eyes on the back of his hand. “The girl you and Father want me to meet?”

If Narcissa felt any sense of victory, she didn’t let it show. “We’ll talk about it later. Right now, I think you should go back to bed.”

Draco stood, suddenly aware of gnawing exhaustion. “You should sleep, too, Mother.”

“I will.” She looked down at the photo of the Black heirs. “In a moment.”

Seeing that she needed more time to herself, Draco kissed her softly on the head, and then left the drawing room. He walked back upstairs to his room and crawled into bed.

For the first time in months, he fell asleep without trouble.

* * *

Rain fell from the grey sky in a fine sheet of mist, obscuring anything within a distance of fifty feet. Draco sat, protected from the elements, under the glass roof of the family conservatory. Leafy green plants grew all around him; magical flowers bloomed in the temperate warmth, most behind separate enclosures. Behind him, a large jellyfish floated in a tank of water like a ghost. Faint, purple light glowed from its gelatinous body as it hovered with its tendrils swirling like hair around it.

On the wire-framed table before him sat an enticing tea party spread: cucumber sandwiches, cherry scones, fresh fruit and wedges of cheese. Steam spiraled from a silver teapot, the fragrance of jasmine making Draco’s nose twitch.

He’d surprised himself by eating a lot of what was on offer, and finishing an entire cup of tea. Then again, attending to the basic need of eating was a simple feat compared to his sartorial choice for the day. He’d dressed in a fetching suit of pale grey. After having lived in his robes for the better part of nine months, it was almost like having new skin.

All in all, it would have been a pleasant afternoon if it weren’t for the fact that he and the young lady sitting across the table from him had exchanged one word in the course of three-quarters of an hour: _hello_.

Not for the first time during the course of their silence, Draco took her in as if examining an interesting pattern in the sky. 

She was nearly seventeen and completely careless with it. Her skin was flawless as precious stone and dark as hawthorn. She was curvy, yes, but the sharpness in her hazel eyes belied anything remotely soft. Wavy hair fell in dark tresses like the cloak of night around her face. All in all, she had beauty to spare, and didn’t seem to give much of a damn about it.

Narcissa had said that the girl was nearing the end of her Sixth Year at Hogwarts. The slight age difference had made Draco cringe, until Father, once more possessed of his newfound pep, had said: “Oh for the love of Merlin, isn’t as if we’re setting you up with a child bride!”

And that was true enough. But at that moment, abiding as he was of his parents’ wishes, Draco would have taken the faintest excuse to cut and run.

But he’d done enough of that, though. At the very least, he could boast of having done something more than wandering the manor without aim.

He reached across the table for a custard tart. The cuff of his shirt rode up past his wrist. Ebony stained pale skin; the forked tongue of a snake lapping forever at the point where his pulse beat. Sitting back in his seat, Draco chanced a look at his guest once more. She was staring at his hand, her perfect eyebrows raised.

Draco popped the tart into his mouth, wiped his lips on a napkin, and said, “It’s rude to stare.”

Her lips parted. Draco fought the nearly instantaneous response the simple gesture had on him.

Then she inclined her head, which would have been supplicant if it weren’t for the fact that nothing about this girl was demure enough to be so.

“It’s also rude to invite a guest over for tea and not say a word to them.” Her voice put Draco in mind of fine silk against onyx.

“I said a word to you,” Draco replied. “I said ‘hello’”.

“Oh yes, forgive me. I was so stricken by the scintillating conversation that followed, I must have forgotten.” She took a sip of tea.

Draco narrowed his eyes. “What did you say your name was?”

She smiled, a thing like the blooming of nightshade. “Oh, but I never did. That was your lovely and gracious mother. If it pleases you to hear it, I do know your name.”

“It would be hard not to, seeing as how this is _my_ home.”

“Ah, but you’d be surprised.” She leaned forward, and Draco tried very hard to keep his eyes on her face. “For example, I could be muggle-born, and therefore wouldn’t have the faintest idea who you are. I might be in a Hogwarts house different from the one you were in. Or there’s the possibility that I might not care about family names in the least.”

Draco raised an eyebrow. “But you aren’t, are you?”

“What?”

“A mudbl—“ He caught himself and cleared his throat. The girl’s lips thinned, and Draco knew that here, at least, was someone who could never have been impressed by all his careless showboating.

“Muggle-born,” he amended as tactfully as he dared. It would have been impossible to the point of mythological to set up such a match, but then again, Lucius and Narcissa seemed to be desperate for their son to rejoining the world.

“No.” The way she spoke the world could have cowed a mountain troll. “Would it matter if I was?”

“No.” Draco looked at his plate, wishing the silence between them had gone unbroken. He traced the serpentine embossment on the fine china, as if he’d find some form of absolvement at the end. But the pattern connected, and was therefore, infinite. No resolution.

“Astoria.”

Draco looked at the girl, and saw that she was watching him intently. The gaze was clinical, but also oddly compassionate. It made him think, quite disconcertingly, of Granger.

“I’m sorry?”

“My name,” said the girl, “is Astoria Greengrass.” She took another sip of tea.

Draco felt a shocking rush of cursory recognition. She’d been but another face in the corridors, but he realized he’d seen her before. Only in those days, she’d been coltish and clumsy—a slip of a thing who’d grown into this stupefying beauty with a wit like a basilisk fang.

“I was in your sister’s year,” said Draco, almost without thinking. “Delphini, right?”

Astoria smirked. “Hardly. Daphne. I can’t think of any parents being cruel enough to name their child Delphini. Then again, here I am saddled with Astoria.”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it,” said Draco. Then, worried that he’d appeared too eager, he added, “As names go, at least. I had a cousin named Nymphadora if that’s any consolation.”

Astoria choked on her tea. “Nymphadora? That’s certainly…classical." 

Draco shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about the late Nymphadora Lupin; the guilt was already rearing its ugly head.

“You weren’t friendly with Daphne,” Astoria remarked. “She was a bit of a lone wolf. Or is that snake?” She shrugged. “Either way, she was almost in Ravenclaw before the Hat chose Slytherin.”

“She was well placed,” said Draco. He remembered Daphne as an intensely studious girl. She cared little for showing off, or for the typical foul antics of himself and his cronies. But when provoked, the fangs came out, as Blaise Zabini had learned. He’d teased her one day in their Fifth Year about her genuine interest in Muggle Studies.

“Alright, muggle-lover?” He’d said with that typical shrewdness. He’d wanted to provoke as much as get her attention, given that Daphne had been just as beautiful as her sister.

Not a split-second later, Zabini had ended up flattened against the Common Room wall, his eyes watering from the force of Daphne’s spell.

“If I were you,” Daphne had said coldly, “I wouldn’t cross this muggle-lover. She can be a real bitch when she wants to be.”

The memory made Draco chuckle to himself.

“She stayed behind, you know,” said Astoria. “During the Battle. I’d gone home with everyone else, and my parents nearly Apparated to take her as well.” Astoria laughed bitterly. “All that chaos and bloodshed, and all she came out with were a few cuts and a broken nose." 

Draco stared. He’d been so consumed by blind panic during the final battle—so tormented at the destruction being wrought upon a school that had housed him for years—that he’d assumed not a single Slytherin had stood in defiance of Voldemort’s attack.

But of course there had to be at least some—those few who, like Astoria’s sister, hadn’t fallen prey to the notion that Slytherin meant Dark. Recalling the hex she’d flattened Zabini with, Draco pitied whichever Death Eater had gotten on the wrong side of Daphne Greengrass’s wand.

“Are you also in Slytherin?” Draco asked.

“Yes. Nearly in Gryffindor, if you can believe that.”

“I was Slytherin before it even touched my head.”

“I can believe that.” Astoria’s eyes shifted to Draco’s left arm once more. The beautiful danger fell from her face like severed flower petals. The expression served to impress upon Draco just how young Astoria really was.

“Did it hurt?” She asked quietly. “When they did it?”

Draco sighed. “Not as much as what came afterwards.” All the torments, the deaths…the chaos.

After a moment’s careful hesitation, Astoria said, “Then why?”

That two syllables had the power to cut him so deep ought to have been punishable by law. Draco stared hard at the table, focusing on the rain as it drizzled over the conservatory. The light from the jellyfish tank continued to pulse, the effect hypnotic.

He’d have exploded with anger before. Now, though, he felt less riddled with guilt over his mistakes, and simply wearied by the memory of them. He’d done what he’d done; and, as interfering with the past was a violation in the extreme, he had to move forward…just as his mother had after losing her friends to either side of a war. 

“I was in Slytherin for the wrong reason,” he said at last. “Cunning implies intelligence, and I was a baseline student at best. I’m hardly ambitious, since you have to have the talent to back it up. I think you must have that in spades if my memories of your sister are in the right.”

“But what does that have to do with the Death Eaters?”

Draco admired the plain way in which she spoke, even if it left him utterly rattled.

“I was in Slytherin because I wanted the glory,” he said. “I liked the idea of it: the intimidation, the power. It was cowardice. And that was precisely why I joined the Death Eaters. I wanted the bravado of it.” He shook his head. “I suppose my family history had a hand, as well.” And what had that been based in, but his father’s need to shelter himself and his family alongside the most dangerous?

“They seem all right to me,” Astoria said placatingly.

“It’s guilt.” 

“That’s better than nothing. My family never got involved either way, at least until Daphne took that stand. The Death Eaters left us alone because we were pure-bloods and weren’t openly supportive of Dumbledore.”

“Good.” Draco glanced around the conservatory. “I suppose all this aristocratic bullshit isn’t endearing you to us, then.”

“Actually, I rather enjoy the finer things in life, so long as they’re not ostentatious.”

“You’re in the right place for that.”

“Excellent. I’ll send for my things after tea.”

Draco’s lips twitched. “You’re infuriating.”

“And maybe that’s what you need.” Astoria’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “Someone to shake you out of this melancholia; someone to call you out on your…what did you call it? Oh yes: _aristocratic bullshit_.” 

Draco’s laugh burst from him like a patronus. He’d rarely laughed in a way so pure, so honest. It wasn’t a guffaw or a sneer, but a real laugh, born of something like joy. It sounded foreign to his own ears, and yet, he couldn’t help it.

Astoria looked dazed, as if Draco’s laugh had hit her the same way her sister’s hex had hit Blaise Zabini.

“I got a laugh out of Draco Malfoy,” she said. “That deserves an Order of Merlin. Third Class, I think.”

“First Class,” Draco said, taking a breath to calm himself. “You have no idea how rare a thing like that is.”

“That’s sad. We’ll have to work on that.”

“We?”

But Astoria only smiled mysteriously, and plucked a fat strawberry from the fruit tray. Draco watched the scarlet berry disappear between those cherry lips, and for once, didn’t feel irritated by the warm feeling that rushed through his body. Had anyone told him that he’d find himself completely carried away by this enchanting girl—or anyone at all—and he’d have looked at them cross-eyed. She challenged him…and that, exactly as she’d said, was what he needed.

Movement from outside caught his eye. Narcissa was walking towards the conservatory.

Draco’s smile faded. Astoria was only on Easter break. She’d have to go back to school soon…

“Can I write to you?” Draco asked.

Astoria looked him over, her hazel eyes raking him from head to torso. “Yes,” she said, smiling. “I’d like that very much.” 

Draco felt as if he could fly.

“But if you’re thinking of sending me photos of yourself naked, warn me beforehand so I can let Madam Pomfrey know to revive me.”

And Draco experienced another first—his entire face went red as a rose.

The door opened. Cool air flowed in with Narcissa. She paused, noticing the smirk on Astoria’s face and the uncharacteristic flush on her son’s.

“Astoria,” she said, “it’s nearly time…”

Astoria sighed, looking genuinely frustrated. “Damn.”

If only they hadn’t wasted so much time in silence.

But even after she’d risen and said her goodbyes—even after she’d accepted a simple kiss on the hand and laughed as if it were a shot of pure rainbow—Draco couldn’t feel despondent at her departure.

Later that afternoon, he walked along the path in the woods, this time not to run away from the house, but just to think. Surrounded by new flowers and budding leaves, he realized that something had begun today. He would not only write to Astoria, he would see her again. Of that he was absolutely sure.

Something squealed in the bushes. A rabbit scampered out a moment later, pursued by the same bloodthirsty fox from several days before.

Draco whipped his wand out just as the fox opened its mouth. The rabbit sailed through the air, right over its predator’s snout. Draco caught it in his arms, and held it against him as it quivered. 

He met the amber gaze of the fox…then, emboldened by his meeting with Astoria, he stuck his tongue out at the cheated vixen, turned around, and walked back to the manor, holding the little rabbit to him like a house pet.

His mother had been right.

There was so much more ahead of him than what he’d been.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Throw me a kudo, bookmark or comment if you enjoyed this. There's one more part in this series left, and the relationship depicted is one Jo has never actually touched on. Stay tuned!


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